Women’s Eights Head of the River 2016

The women’s squad had a successful Womens Eights Head of the River.

The 1st 8 finished in an excellent sixth place. They had a very good race with a three-way battle taking place along the stretch from Barnes Bridge to Hammersmith between Thames, Durham University and Newcastle University. By Hammersmith Newcastle had caught up with Thames, and had about 3/4 of a length lead, with both boats having passed Durham. Thames held their ground and were able to move back past Newcastle from Hammersmith to the finish, beating Newcastle by 0.4 seconds to secure sixth overall.

The 2nd 8 also had a good race and finished a credible 30th overall in a time of 20.36. Both of these results were an improvement on last year’s 11th and 33rd respectively.

For the first time we fielded an all-Thames masters crew, featuring four of the rowers who won the overall Head pennant in 2012. As the sole masters A entry, the crew needed to pull out all the stops to be in with a chance of the masters pennant. They finished agonisingly close, just 0.3 seconds behind an extremely fast Tideway Scullers masters C and an excellent 45th place overall.

Thames had two novice crews this year and both finished inside the top 200, comprehensively beating a lot of more experienced crews and looking fast as well as being fast. The novice 1st 8 were 109th overall and third in the novice club category, behind fast junior novice crews from Lea RC and Henley RC. Meanwhile the 2nd 8 had a superb race to come 192nd.

The club also entered a second intermediate boat, consisting of a mixture of intermediate and novice athletes as well as a junior rower. With only a couple of outings under their belt, the crew had a solid row and finished 186th overall, meaning all six Thames crews were inside the top 200.